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The Socratic Method (Episode 47)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
In this episode, Caleb and Michael discuss the Socrates and the Socratic method.
The Socratic method is the core philosophical technique. So, it's essential to understand.
Caleb and Michael start start by giving an initial background on Socrates and then move to discussing the strengths and risks of Socratic questioning.
(01:28) Introduction
(04:17) Who Was Socrates?
(12:13) Socrate’s Historical Impact
(14:31) The Socratic Method
(29:35) The Method As A Tool of Ethical Improvement
(39:25) Pros of the Socratic Method
(48:59) The Risks of the Socratic Method
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Socratic Thinking
00:00:00
Speaker
I just think socratically. It just really, really helps me as a therapeutic tool sort through my thinking. It is just a tool for, for discipline thinking, whether you're stressed in a therapeutic concept text, like I was saying, or whether you're, you know, you're at work or you're reading an article, that constant kind of why is a really good habit to get into.
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week we'll share two conversations, one between the two of us, and another we'll be an in-depth conversation with and experts.
00:00:37
Speaker
In this conversation, Michael and I talk about the Socratic method. We give some background on Socrates, the Stoic sage, discuss the power of the method, and also cover some of the risks.
Socrates: Background and Influence
00:00:51
Speaker
The Socratic method is at the core of philosophy, so it's essential to understand. If you're not familiar with it, after listening to this episode, you will be.
00:01:01
Speaker
If you've already heard of it, this episode should give you a deeper sense of why it matters, how to use it well, as well as some of the potential downsides. Here is our conversation. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Montaveros. And I'm Michael Trombley. And today we are going to be talking about the Socratic method, Socratic questioning.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yeah, excited for this one. So I've done some, some research here. I've prepared some, some info on Socrates that we're going to jump into, but the structure of this podcast is going to go in four parts. I'm going to start off with who was Socrates discussion of the person and his philosophical influence. An example of Socratic questioning. That's one that I wrote.
00:01:50
Speaker
I was joking with you before we started recording that Plato makes these look easy, but it's kind of hard to write these platonic dialogues and have them come off natural. So we'll go through an example of the Socratic method in practice. Then we'll talk about the characteristics of the Socratic method, you know, what, what defines it, what are its unique aspects, what makes it so famous. And then I have some reflections and I'm sure you'll jump in Caleb on the things that I think are really good about it and the things that I think are really
00:02:18
Speaker
I don't know, not as good about it. And I overall think it's a pretty cool thing, but some of the pros, some of the cons, some of the interesting stuff in between. The reason for this episode, the reason I wanted to do this one is that you can really think of Socrates like the grandfather of stoicism. So sometimes we talk about something like Epicureanism, which is
00:02:38
Speaker
I would say a rival or it's really it's doing something different than what stoicism is even though it's still an ancient Greek philosophy whereas Socrates was we'll talk about this in a bit but was really the grandfather figure or I would say the sage the the
00:02:54
Speaker
idle that a lot of these different schools all look up to. So when you talk about, if you're interested in stoicism, when you learn about Socrates, you talk about Socrates, you're really tracing the intellectual heritage of stoicism in many ways back to its source, or at least the source that we have writings of or records of. So anything you want to add before I jump into it?
00:03:15
Speaker
Well, just to emphasize how much of a model Socrates was for the Stoics, the founder of Stoicism, Zeno Citium, is said to have
00:03:28
Speaker
found his way to philosophy by stumbling upon a dialogue about Socrates' life written by Xenophon. And that was what inspired him to take up philosophy as an occupation. And he was the very first Stoic, if you will, the founder of Stoicism. But you'll see this again and again, the difference. Stoics take Socrates as a key model for what it is to be a philosopher and live well.
Socrates' Philosophical Legacy
00:03:57
Speaker
So if not for Socrates, there might not have been Stoicism. I mean, there might not have been Plato. There might not have been Western philosophy as a whole. There certainly probably would have been something, but it would have looked a lot different. I think that's safe to say. So I think a really cool character and some interesting innovations of his own. And so let's jump into those.
00:04:20
Speaker
So to start things off, I wanted to talk about who was Socrates, assuming maybe some people are coming to this, they're starting to learn about ancient Greek philosophy, or they just focused on Stoicism, they just focused on Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius. So who was the Socrates guy? So Socrates was born around 470 BC. The founding of Stoicism is around 300 BC.
00:04:44
Speaker
So this is around, you know, by the time Socrates is an adult, it's around a hundred, you know, 120 years before stoicism is founded. So it's really a couple generations beforehand. He left none of his own writing. That's something that we should state from the start. So all the representations we have of Socrates are representations by other people or from other people. Most famously, as you already mentioned, Xenophon writes about Socrates and Plato, most famous of all, writes about Socrates.
00:05:14
Speaker
And this is why we know so much about him, and as you said, this is why Azinocytium knows about him, because he was such a strong character that people would write about him and preserve these stories of his life, both autobiographical or more fictional for others to read about later.
00:05:30
Speaker
He was quite famous in Athens, would go around, described himself, at least in Plato's account, as a gadfly, bugging people, questioning them, and inciting these arguments or disagreements or Socratic questioning of people about why they live the way they do, why they believe what they believe, how they can be certain that they know what they know.
00:05:55
Speaker
Famously, he took up this rule because the oracle of Delphi, the story goes, was asked, you know, who is the wisest person? And the oracle answered Socrates, and Socrates heard this and said, this is the most bizarre thing to me. Like, how could this be the case? Because I'm, I don't know anything, you know? So what could, what could the oracle have met by this? And apparently Socrates then went around questioning people to try to see, you know, what other people knew if they knew more than him or what his type of
00:06:23
Speaker
knowledge was. And Socrates famously from this came up with this kind of humility and this idea, well, I don't know anything, but at least I know that I know nothing. Whereas when I encounter these other people, when I bump into them, they always seem much more confident than they deserve to be. They always seem to know or say they know a lot more than they actually do know when I sit down and debate with them and interrogate these concepts.
00:06:49
Speaker
So that's a bit about him as a character quite famously, I guess, socially difficult. That's an interesting aspect of his character. And if you want to know more about that, you can read Plato's Apology. This features when Socrates was sentenced to death. So he was sentenced to death in 399 BC at the age of 71 under the charge of corrupting the youth and, I guess, popularizing false gods.
00:07:16
Speaker
There's a lot of historical debate that goes beyond what was actually happening there or what some of the incentives might have been for the people who prosecuted Socrates or put this charge against Socrates to put this charge against him. But certainly Plato or the philosophers saw him as not doing these things.
00:07:36
Speaker
as not corrupting the youth in any sort of meaningful way that would deserve his punishment, but as somebody who was inciting the pursuit of truth and really the beginning of philosophy. And he's really put on this pedestal by Plato. And so a little bit of background on Plato, one of the most famous Western philosophers of all time, the teacher to Aristotle, I would say probably the second most famous philosopher of all time. And in Plato's writing, you have three periods of the early, the middle, and late period.
00:08:04
Speaker
That's kind of a chronological period. In all of these periods, Plato's writings involve these dialogues between Socrates and other people. Almost all of them, some of them don't include Socrates, but the vast majority do. And it's generally agreed upon that the writings in the early period when Plato was young were accurate reflections of Socrates.
00:08:25
Speaker
So when you get into the middle and the late period, middle, late periods, probably around the Republic, and then late periods, everything written after that, it's agreed upon that, look, Socrates is now a mouthpiece for Plato. He's saying the things that Plato believes. He's not saying what Socrates believes. But the agreement is that if you go back to these early dialogues, the Apology, the Euthyphro, if you go back to these works, you can get a reasonable accurate representation, not exactly what Socrates said, because they were written
00:08:55
Speaker
you know, decades after Socrates died, but an accurate representation of the kind of philosophizing that Socrates would do. And that's what we're relying upon when we make these claims about the type of thinker Socrates was. And that's where we find the Socratic method or Socratic questioning. Anything you want to say before I keep going?
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, just to add a bit of color to Socrates, when you say he was socially difficult, we mentioned the dialogue, the Euthyphro before, and the Euthyphro Socrates is waiting for a trial and he bumps into Euthyphro, who's a young gentleman who's taking his
00:09:34
Speaker
father to court which is a revolutionary thing to be doing in any society but that aside society especially because of the strength of the kinship bonds and how seriously people would have been felt the norm to respect one's father so Socrates meets him he says well you must know a lot about the nature of
00:10:00
Speaker
piety because you are accusing your father of being impious so let's you know let's find out whether that's true or not and essentially he always had this approach that people who made claims to knowledge he took them seriously literally and tried to determine whether or not they possessed knowledge many people might just
00:10:24
Speaker
speak without expecting to be literally questioned about every single thing they said. And you constantly see people getting taken off guard by Socrates in a way. That being said, he did have a
00:10:38
Speaker
large number of loyal friends. He's clearly influential on his students. So when we say socially difficult, I think we mean socially difficult in the sense that he's trying to figure out what the truth is. And often that means bumping up against social niceties, but we shouldn't overlook that he did take
00:10:57
Speaker
you know, friendships seriously. And he was a respected member of the city of Athens. There's always so much to say about Socrates, but two aspects I suppose to him was that's worth emphasizing here is just that, yes, he's focused on the truth as we'll see, and that won't bump into social niceties, but we shouldn't overlook that he cultivated serious friendships and was also highly respected in the city.
Understanding the Socratic Method
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good way to put a kill. That's a good correction. It's not that he didn't have any friends. It's not that he was difficult to everyone. It was really like hot or cold. Love him or hate him. Either try to get him put to death or break into his jail afterwards and try to free him. It was all these extremes with him.
00:11:42
Speaker
But as you said, it was, was hard to be in that middle ground, I think, because you either got on board with what he was doing. You either got on board with the pursuit of truth and saw it as valuable or, you know, you're like, you have to throw when you go, Hey, this is a pretty hard day for me. Like leave me alone. Stop interrogating me on the city, on the, you know, courthouse steps.
00:12:00
Speaker
Yes, that's some good color. I really do recommend more reading about him. He's a great character. And so the thing that we're talking about today, I wanted to give that color, but not focusing on the life of Socrates, focusing on the Socratic method. And it's in these early dialogues of Plato that you see the Socratic method and where this comes up.
00:12:20
Speaker
It's also, I would say, this Socrates, this early Socrates, this genuine Socrates, rather than the mouthpiece for Plato Socrates, that genuine Socrates that becomes an inspiration for much of Hellenistic philosophy. So many of the Hellenistic schools, so the contemporaries of the Stoics, the skeptics, the cynics, for example, and the Stoics as well, saw themselves as offshoots of Socrates or following in the kind of the lineage set down by Socrates. But I think it's really interesting in how
00:12:50
Speaker
I think they look up to him as kind of a founding father, a sage, a holy figure almost. And each group really looked at a different part of Socrates' teaching and said, ah, that's it. That was Socrates' main teaching and that's what we're going to follow and that's what we're going to promote.
00:13:09
Speaker
So for the skeptics, it was this idea that his belief that he knew nothing or his knowledge that he knew nothing as being a high moral good, as the most important thing to do is not fall victim to false beliefs or to blind yourself with overconfidence. That's what the skeptic latched on to.
00:13:27
Speaker
For the cynics, as you said, it was his rejection of social norms or social niceties and the pursuit of truth and genuine living. He was someone who didn't conform to social niceties if it meant not pursuing the truth. And for the Stoics, it was a couple of different things, but a couple of things you find in Socrates that were really clear if you're a Stoic, you find the idea that virtue is a type of knowledge. You find the idea that no one does wrong willingly.
00:13:53
Speaker
And you find the idea that we should never compromise our virtue because of external circumstances. And again, this comes up in the Apology, which is Plato's writing on the trial of Socrates, where Socrates is being threatened by death, and Socrates doesn't back down on what he sees as his mission of this pursuit of truth, turning people towards truth. He doesn't, I guess, lie or come off as ungenuine, even though he's facing death. He's not afraid of death.
00:14:22
Speaker
And that's something that the stoic look up to and really admire, kind of a martyrdom in a sense. So that's a bit of a background. So what I really wanted to focus on, so there's those beliefs, if you study stoicism, you want to know about those beliefs or those arguments, virtue is, is.
00:14:39
Speaker
knowledge, no one does wrong willingly, these kind of ideas. But the Socratic method is something that's very unique to Socrates. It's something that comes up later a lot in Epictetus in particular. And I think it's really interesting, both historically interesting to learn about, but it's also a great tool for self-improvement.
00:14:57
Speaker
It's a tool both for conversation with friends, but also for kind of self interrogation. So if people come out of this podcast, understanding what this chronic method is and understanding how to apply it, I'll be very happy with that. So we're going to jump into a little, little, you know, play a little dialogue that I wrote here, a mini one where I did my best to be Socrates and Caleb's going to be, you know, you're just going to be yourself. Hey, except I made you write all these things about how obviously correct I am because that's the kind of way Socratic dialogues go.
00:15:27
Speaker
And I want to give this example of what a Socratic dialogue is like, and then we'll deconstruct some of the factors of the Socratic method afterwards. So to set the scene, it's Caleb and Socrates. We're walking down the street. I'll be Socrates. You'll be Caleb. And Caleb gives some money to a friend who asks for a loan. So I'll start. I'll be Socrates. Why did you do that? I wanted to help them. So you know what it means to help someone.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yes. What is it? It is to give them what they want. But surely you think it's impossible to harm someone when you help them, correct? Yes. And to contribute to something that they will regret later is to harm them. That must be the case.
00:16:18
Speaker
But don't some people want things they will regret later? If someone in a rage asks for a gun to kill someone, they might want this in the moment, but then will regret it later. Yes, this happens. But then, by the criteria we provided, giving someone what they wanted cannot be the definition of what it means to help someone. Because sometimes what people want now, they will regret later. And we've admitted that this is a kind of harm.
00:16:44
Speaker
Yes, you must be right. So then you must change your definition. By God, you are purely right Socrates. To help someone is not to give them what they want. It must be to give them something that benefits them. So you know what it means to benefit someone? Question mark.
00:17:04
Speaker
That's the end. And it repeats forever. But that's a little, that's a little example of the Socratic method. Thanks Caleb for being my willing participant in our play.
Exploration of Ethical Concepts
00:17:16
Speaker
And now I'm going to kind of deconstruct some of the characteristics of that dialogue. So, you know, this started with Caleb doing something that was very, I would say normal. Somebody asked for a loan. Caleb provides that loan.
00:17:28
Speaker
And then Socrates is going to walk, you know, you must have a reason for doing that. If you're doing that, he says, well, I want to help them. Wow. Socrates thinks that's incredible. You know what it means to help somebody. You know, the nature of the good. That's so impressive. Tell me about it. Or doesn't, doesn't this, doesn't this thing you're doing that you think helping someone knock up against some other intuitions. And this is the kind of format that we see a lot of Socratic dialogues go or the Socratic questioning go in.
00:17:53
Speaker
where Socrates asks these questions. But I've tried here to pick out the five steps of the Socratic method. So step one, the interlocutor, the person Socrates is talking to, takes an unreflective, often intuitive position. In this case, it was this idea that giving someone money when they ask for a loan is helping them. Unreflective, but it's intuitive. If you said that in normal conversation, no one would be upset about it.
00:18:21
Speaker
The second step is that Socrates then develops the full implications of that position, including related positions the interlocutor holds that they might not realize contradicts with the original position. Giving someone alone is helping them. How do you know that? Well, because I believe helping them is to give them what they want. Okay.
00:18:42
Speaker
There again, intuitive, unreflective position. What's the implication of giving somebody what they want? Sometimes you give people what they want and it clearly harms them later. Like if they're angry, this is an example I took from Plato's Republic. They give the example of someone's angry and you give them the axe and they go and kill somebody, right? Well, you didn't just help them, even though you gave them what they want. So there is the full implications of the position, but there's a contradiction.
00:19:08
Speaker
So that's step three. Socrates identifies a contradiction between our intuitions and the implications of our position and demands that one of the claims be dropped or updated. This leads to step four. The interlocutor refines or updates their original position. Caleb admits in the conversation, okay, well, giving somebody what they want can't be helping them. Those can't be the same thing. And then the interlocutor takes a new position.
00:19:33
Speaker
And step five is that process repeats until a proper definition is identified or all participants admit ignorance. So that was my attempt to give five steps to the Socratic method. What do you think, Caleb?
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that makes sense. One way to think about this is we're talking about, in our example, giving money to a friend, helping them. And the first step is coming up with a definition of what it is to help. And in a sense, we're not just playing with words. We're using a definition to describe a phenomena in the world, help. And we think we're truly helping someone. So we do that. And then what Socrates
00:20:16
Speaker
does as he thinks of a number of different examples that might fall under helping or harming someone and reveals different cases, sort of explores what we might say about these different examples and see where do these fall on the helping versus harming side.
00:20:36
Speaker
And often after giving a number of different examples, we'll find that the original way of dividing what's helping and what's harming needs to be refined because we found examples of things that our initial account would say are helpful that we do not in fact judge are helpful.
00:20:57
Speaker
or perhaps the reverse. And this process of refining definitions, I think it's always important to keep in mind is trying to get at the nature of whatever we're talking about, trying to talk about the thing itself, which in this case was help. But in other cases, it can of course be a range of different things from love, justice, courage, and on and on.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, great. And so, so I think the point you're making there Caleb is it can, it's not just definitional wordplay. It's not a game. It's like we're trying to figure out what it means to help somebody. That's a core ethical question. Right. Because we want to help people in our lives. So we need to know what that means. And people often.
00:21:41
Speaker
Again, the fun part about Socrates is you think of him walking around and talking to normal people, right? Talking to non-philosophers. And any person you ask has these notions of what it means to help people, what something is good, what's bad, what's harmful, what's just, unjust. Even today, it's as true in ancient Athens as it is today.
00:22:00
Speaker
We're all walking around with these intuitions, with these unreflective positions, unless we've done years and years and years of philosophy work. We live and act on these things that seem normal to us, or maybe culturally given, maybe family given, maybe just we haven't thought about it that much. And so Socrates is so fascinating when I say, well, you're acting based on this belief, but you haven't really interrogated it. Or I guess what Socrates would say is clearly you must know what this is if you're acting on the basis of it. So let's talk about it in a bit.
00:22:30
Speaker
And a couple things that are unique about the Socratic method, Socrates doesn't, in his early dialogues, he doesn't actually add any arguments himself. It's all question-based. So it's all about pulling out the things that the person they're talking to already believes in.
00:22:48
Speaker
and then comparing those to each other. So Socrates doesn't come up and say, oh, you provided definition A, but I think to help somebody's definition B, it's not about that. It's about deconstructing the implications of that position and seeing can it hold up to scrutiny or do we lose it when we scrutinize it?
00:23:08
Speaker
Another famous definition of another famous one I've talked about before is the Euthyphro dilemma, where Euthyphro says what it means for something to be pious, what it means for something to be holy in this sense, is it has to be something that the gods approve of. Socrates asks,
00:23:26
Speaker
If the gods approved of murder and rape, you know, would that be pious? And Socrates isn't proposing a counter definition here. He's just drawing out the implications of that first position and forcing Euthyphro to kind of confront that conflict and then probably reject, probably reject one of those or change the definition.
00:23:48
Speaker
So it's this real kind of negative, it's this negative game, or I wouldn't say negative game, but he's, he's not introducing things. He's not asking people to believe things. He's just asking people to look in the face, the implications of the things that they themselves have said they believed. Right. He's asking them to, to play, to play the, to play the genuine game of knowledge, pursue with them and take some time to think about the implications of what they believe.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say it's interesting that your dialogue is very similar to the one account of justice in the Republic. I'm not sure if you do that intentionally, but.
00:24:22
Speaker
There's the account of giving people what they are owed. That's what it is. That's what justice is, giving people what they're owed. Cephalos says this as his account, and Socrates asks, well, that means returning debts, and when you borrow something, you should give it back. Cephalos says yes, and the response is yes.
00:24:47
Speaker
that Socrates follows up with, but what if you've, you know, borrowed a sword and the person is going to, you know, you suspect they're going to go out and do something terrible once you give the sword back to them. Would you still pay back your debts in that case, give back what you've argued? And the answer seems to be,
00:25:08
Speaker
No, maybe not. So you're making at least, you need to either throw away this account of justice as a way of repaying debts or somehow make it more precise. And Socrates is always forcing his interlocutors to clarify or forcing his interlocutors to do one of those things and not merely float by with a vague sense of what justice is, what benefit is, what piety is.
00:25:36
Speaker
I didn't try to make it similar, but it's really hard to come up with a Socratic dialogue that Plato hasn't talked about or that Plato hasn't already done. There's lots of Socrates in Plato. And so I was probably, I think I was inspired by that passage. I tried to do something unique, but I think it was, I think it's a good argument.
00:25:54
Speaker
And one thing that's interesting, so if you read a lot of Plato, the Socratic method in the early dialogues ends up in this state of ignorance, where they say, well, I guess we just need to, I guess I don't know what it means to help somebody. Thanks for that Socrates, kind of shake hands and walk away, or screw you and walk away. But either way, they kind of end up in this state of like, wow, I've left this conversation more confused
00:26:21
Speaker
than I was before or less certain I know what is true than I was before. When you get to middle and late Plato, you know, like the Republic, like you just mentioned, Socrates will end up with a definition and Socrates will say clearly justice must be this and he'll start off by batting away these other...
00:26:40
Speaker
I guess that's the important point I guess I want to clarify here is that the Socratic method is not reductio ad absurdum. reductio ad absurdum is a argumentative technique where you show that a position leads to an absurd conclusion or an impossible conclusion. So the position must be rejected. It's not that it is not just the process.
00:27:01
Speaker
of countering positions by showing compelling counter arguments or showing that they lead to absurd positions. That's one part of it, but that's not the whole thing.
00:27:12
Speaker
is a process for interrogating truth, a process for interrogating things that you took for granted. Part of that is reductio ad absurdum.
Stoicism and Socratic Influence
00:27:22
Speaker
Part of that is a rejection of positions that lead to absurd conclusions. But the method is to keep going. The method is not to say you are wrong. The method is, OK, produce another definition. And we'll try it again. Produce another definition. Refine it. And we'll try it again, as you said. Refine or change.
00:27:37
Speaker
And early Socrates, I think, saw the goal of that as leaving people kind of in a position of wonder and kind of leave the conversation, wow, I need to really think about these questions more carefully. I need to be a little bit more self-reflective.
00:27:51
Speaker
Obviously you can have this kind of lead to lead to something if you're trying to argue for that, but I don't think you're really doing the Socratic method. If you, or you're doing there, there is a version of the Socratic method that doesn't have a destination in mind. I should say the exercise is in of itself. The goal is just to have this kind of state of wonder and reflection. It's not a persuasion technique in its purest form. I don't think, and I don't think Socrates used it as a persuasion technique either, at least not in the early dialogues.
00:28:22
Speaker
What did you think about that? I think it's key that it's not a trick of rhetoric, although...
00:28:31
Speaker
it is similar to particular rhetorical approaches or it's similar to trying to persuade someone of something, whether it's much more a matter of exploring, of thinking through whether or not something is the case. If you do this by yourself, it's a matter of just putting a question mark next to something you've taken for granted for a while and asking, is this
00:28:59
Speaker
what I thought it was to begin with or, you know, I feel like I've been mistreated at work. What is, in fact, a just working arrangements? And just starting asking a broader question like that and trying to see, does that clarify what's going on for you and continuing to ask?
00:29:22
Speaker
why questions continue to think through different examples or counter examples without a rhetorical purpose in mind, but with the purpose of trying to see things as they are.
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah, great. I think that's exactly, I think that's exactly right. The pursuit of truth, right? Is, is one thing I think a key takeaway from the Socratic method. It's one way to get there. And I think you said this the next section. So that was the Socratic method. I want to talk now about the Socratic method and the Stoics or the Socratic method and kind of ethical improvement.
00:29:53
Speaker
But I think one thing you pointed out is really important is that you don't need a Socrates. You can be your own Socrates, right? You can be, and, and I think maybe this comes naturally to a lot of people that are interested in philosophy. This might come naturally to a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, but.
00:30:09
Speaker
the kind of revolutionary notion of saying, I was treated unjustly at work, as you said, and then saying, no, wait, what does it mean to be treated unjustly? And just to constantly put that question mark against the things that you say until you either refine, admit ignorance, or yeah, like refine to the point where you land at something you feel really confident in.
00:30:29
Speaker
So yeah, great point Caleb. So moving into the Socratic method in the Stoics, the Stoics, we talked about this a bit at the start, heavily inspired by Socrates. As Anthony Long says, one of the top scholars on Stoicism, Socrates is the primary Stoic role model. He's the main source of inspiration for the Stoics. Socrates is the most mentioned person in Epictetus's discourses, for example.
00:30:54
Speaker
more than Zeno or Chrysippus or any other Stoic. That's really who Epictetus looks up to and refers to as kind of the person who got it right, the person who lived the Stoic life. And I also think there's this interesting kind of historical thing where, you know, the same way we look up to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus looked up to Socrates. So there's this same role modeling going on that the Stoics were doing to Socrates, who in Epictetus's case,
00:31:22
Speaker
was born 500 years earlier almost, which a huge period of time at that point in history still is today. In terms of the Socratic method. Just in terms of role modeling, Marcus Aurelius mentioned Socrates a number of times. Seneca modeled not just his life, but the way he died on the death of Socrates. So it's always just worth emphasizing again.
00:31:49
Speaker
when it comes to role modeling in their actions and lives, all three of the big Roman stoics took Socrates very seriously. And of course, Epictetus, in a sense, you can understand a number of passages about him talking about questioning impressions, being vigilance about
00:32:10
Speaker
determining whether what they say is true or not as prompting you to build up a model of an internal Socrates who's there on your shoulder asking you, is that your initial reaction? Does that reflect judgments that are in fact true or not? And I think once you see Socrates, you start seeing him in all sorts of places in the Stoics.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think those are two great ideas, the internal Socrates, the little Socrates on your shoulder, and then also how much it pops up when you see that inspiration, absolutely. And so I'm going to talk about one of those examples of where it pops up and you see that inspiration, Epictetus in particular.
00:32:55
Speaker
In terms of the Socratic method, the Stoics also really looked at it, so there was that internal aspect, that idea of the sage, that idea of the role model to look up to, that idea of the internal Socrates to question impressions, but then they also viewed it as an education technique.
00:33:11
Speaker
So the Stoics believed that humans could not assent to an apparent contradiction. So you could not believe something that reason made clear to you was not the case. Epictetus uses this example in her sense impressions of you can't believe that it's nighttime when you're outside and the sun is shining in your face. You just can't. So one of the best ways to help other people to persuade them to help their moral education was to make clear the contradictions in what they believed.
00:33:42
Speaker
And I'll read the passage of Epictetus here. This is from Discourses, Chapter 26. And Epictetus says, someone who is skilled in reasoning will thus be able to show each person the contradiction that is causing him to go astray and make him clearly understand that he isn't doing what he wants. For if anyone can make that clear to him, he'll renounce his error of his own accord. But if you fail to show him, don't be surprised if he persists in it, being under the impression that he is acting rightly.
00:34:11
Speaker
So a couple points here, the Stoics believe that, you know, everyone is always doing what they think is right. Everyone is always doing what they think is best. And that's why virtue is knowledge. And that's why vice is ignorance because people when they're acting viciously think they're doing what is best.
00:34:28
Speaker
And if you just admonish someone, if you just criticize someone, they're just going to think, well, that's what they think. That's not what I think. And they're going to continue along their way. Maybe they're going to feel guilty. Maybe they're going to feel ashamed because they know you don't like them, but they're going to keep doing what they're doing.
00:34:46
Speaker
But if you can reveal to them the contradiction in their own behavior, if you can reveal to them that they've made a commitment to something and this behavior doesn't allow them to achieve that commitment, it's not in their own best interests, it's not in the interests of the things that they themselves claim to care about. If you can reveal that contradiction,
00:35:07
Speaker
it's going to be a lot more long-lasting as a behavioral change. It's going to be a lot more effective as a behavioral change. And so I think the same thing applies, Epictetus is obviously talking about his students, but the same thing applies to ourselves, right? If we just kind of shame ourselves, criticize ourselves, nothing really helpful is going to come from that behaviorally. But if we understand what we believe,
00:35:31
Speaker
and understand the contradiction between the way we're acting and what we're committed to, and what we genuinely, the kinds of lies we genuinely want to live, and the lack of consistency between those two, it's a much more effective way of enacting behavioral change.
00:35:44
Speaker
at least in Epictetus's position. And so one more passage I want to read out here by Epictetus, where he goes on to describe this method more fully, again in Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 26. He says, this is why Socrates, placing full confidence in this capacity, this capacity for people to reject contradictions,
00:36:08
Speaker
Socrates, placing full confidence in this capacity, used to say, I'm not in the habit of calling another witness to speak in support of what I'm saying, but I always remain satisfied with the person who is engaging in discussion with me and call on his vote and summon him as a witness so that he alone suffices for me in place of all the others.
00:36:28
Speaker
So the idea is when you're trying to persuade somebody, you believe A and they believe B, and you bring a crowd of people to say A, that's just going to kind of entrench them in the behavior. It's just going to entrench them in the belief. But if you can get them themselves to recognize that they believe A, or they see the rightness to that path, that is going to really motivate behavior.
00:36:52
Speaker
So we don't want to convince other people through peer pressure or showing them that other people believe differently than them. You want to convince them genuinely by showing them the contradictions, by showing them the inconsistencies of what they believe so that they're persuaded and not just defeated debates, right? This means that their behavior will, will genuinely change, which is what the Stoics are after both in other people that they're teaching, but also in yourself. Yep. Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:20
Speaker
So I always think that's kind of cool, this idea of using, there's that question mark we talked about earlier to avoid false beliefs or to say, well, maybe I should think about this more carefully, but then there's also using that question mark to change your mind and to say, well, why do I believe this? Do I really think this is the right way to live? Do I think this is the way to act justly? When somebody, that's an example, I can always go back to these simple examples,
00:37:50
Speaker
somebody insults you and you hit them or something. You say, well, why was I doing that? Well, because I wanted justice. Do I think that's what justice is? Do I think it's hitting people that say words at me? And then if you commit to that and you say yes,
00:38:06
Speaker
You got to kind of flesh out that position and it ends up looking like a difficult position to flesh out. And you end up revealing the kind of the contradictions or the weaknesses in your own position. So it's something you could do for other people, but something you could do for yourself as a tool of self-transformation. So yeah, that's, that's some of the, how the Socratic method I think inspires the Stoics as educators. Any examples, anything else you want to touch on here, Caleb?
00:38:35
Speaker
That was great, Michael. There's, yeah, Epictetus uses it a lot in the discourses. There's a few other examples we could have plucked out, like he had an example we chatted about before about the father escaping from his child's illness because he thinks that would be best. And Epictetus asks, you know, in what sense will that be best? Best for you, best for your child, what's going on? So that's another quick example that comes to mind.
Critiques and Limitations of the Socratic Method
00:39:03
Speaker
But I think we have enough here to have a sense of this is what the Socratic method is. Here are some examples and in particular here is how the Stoics used it. So why don't we go on and think about some of the general pros and cons of the Socratic method.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, great. So I've listed out a list of pros here and things that I think are really helpful about it and kind of stop me as I go Caleb and point out the ones that you want to dig more into. So first, I think as we've paid on, it's a helpful method for the deconstruction of non-reflective common sense ideas. So maybe 10 years into your philosophy journey, you're not relying on many common sense ideas anymore.
00:39:49
Speaker
But most people are, and probably you are too, if you think about it hard enough, we're pretty influenced by our culture, our surrounding and our upbringing. We take a lot of things for granted. So it's a great starting point for questioning the things we take for granted. It doesn't require an alternative position. You are just generating the thinking. You are generating the counter-arguments. You don't need somebody to say, you don't need another lily pad to jump to.
00:40:15
Speaker
so that you stand on solid ground, it's about being comfortable treading water in the ambiguity and rather being preferring to be in that ambiguity, preferring to be kind of treading water than on fake stable ground or whatever the metaphor is.
00:40:30
Speaker
I would rather admit I don't know than profess to know when I don't, right? And this is a way to get to that point of admitting you don't know. You don't need anybody else to do it. You just have to be disciplined. I think that's great. And as I said here with my second point, so it's really the starting point of philosophy.
00:40:48
Speaker
or a tool for engaging the non-philosophical, because you don't need another position to argue, it's something anyone can do both by themselves or you can do with anyone else. It's not like it's something that we often see these philosophical debates. Once we've been doing philosophy for a while, we say, well, are you a utilitarian or are you a deontologist or are you a virtue ethicist?
00:41:16
Speaker
someone who doesn't have a philosophy background, those things don't mean anything to them, right? There's no, they feel alienated from that conversation or they feel like, well, I can't really get my footing here. But you can take, you know, I used to teach teenagers, I used to teach kids, you sit down a bunch of 10 year olds and you do some Socratic questioning with them. You say, what is good? They're going to love that. You know, you say, what does it mean for something to be true? They're going to love there. The kids are going to have a blast with that.
00:41:43
Speaker
You sit down and say, let me tell you about deontological ethics. Their eyes are going to roll so far back, they're going to come back around. So it's this thing you can do with anybody that's fun, helps people, the non philosophical or the people who aren't into philosophy, transition into a reflective life. And I think that's that kind of ethos of Socrates, which is the unexamined life isn't worth living. That's something I talk about all the time, which is that
00:42:07
Speaker
It doesn't really matter what school you think, it doesn't really matter what camp you're in, it's better to be thinking about these questions to be meaningfully engaging with what it means to live a good life than not meaningfully engaging. And the Socratic method is a great way to get there if philosophy seems intimidating. Right, right. Yeah, I think that's always a good reminder. Socrates didn't use terms like utilitarianism himself. He didn't talk about moral realism.
00:42:31
Speaker
or other terms we might talk about when we're in more of a debate type mode of philosophy. It also brings to mind the fact that even if you've been studying philosophy for some time and you're familiar with many non-common sense ideas, you're familiar with the different arguments or positions.
00:42:50
Speaker
just assuming that Socratic mindset can be useful because that doesn't mean that you still have non-reflective positions. It doesn't mean that if you shake up the conceptual snow globe, you might end up somewhere else than you would have if you just continued on as things would have naturally.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, totally, which is kind of inspiring. I feel pumped up about it, just talking about it. And so this is my first two points. It's helpful for us to deconstruct non-reflective common sense ideas. It's kind of philosophy for the masses, I would say, is that second point. And the third point is that I think we could all benefit from being more optimistic about people's capacity to engage in rational arguments.
00:43:32
Speaker
The Socratic method is fundamentally optimistic about people's capacity to engage in these kind of debates. I mean Socrates died, so take that for what you will, interpret that how you want to interpret it.
00:43:44
Speaker
I think we often rely on persuasion, appeals to emotion, metaphor when we're talking to people. These are good. And I think if you, if you believe in what you're saying, or you know, somebody's mistaken because you happen to be an expert in your domain, these are helpful. But pointing out contradictions with a willing participant is very powerful. And it is also empowering for them and puts the power in their hands. So just to say that it makes them feel like they.
00:44:09
Speaker
Like they did it instead of you showed it to them. You know, they really walked along that path to the answer. And because of that, it's much more entrenched in their mind when they get there. And I think sometimes we just think that that can't happen or that people won't be able to do that, which I think is false. Again, I raised the example of working with kids. You can have these arguments, these discussions with kids.
00:44:32
Speaker
often more easily with kids because they're much more comfortable floating in the unknown because that's their life all the time. They never know what's going on. They don't know anything. They don't know anything.
00:44:45
Speaker
I mean, we as adults, we don't know much either, but we're much more uncomfortable admitting we don't know much. So people can have those debates and can kind of sit in that conceptual zone, that rational zone, and there can be a lot of fruitful benefit to it. And the last point I have here, which we already mentioned, is that the benefit to the Socratic method is not this benefit of, wow, no, I have this great tool in my pocket to educate everyone at work. Well, I can't wait to get to my friend group.
00:45:11
Speaker
question them about the good life. It's something you can do by yourself. We've mentioned this, the Socrates on your shoulder, the inner Socrates. When I feel conflicted about something, I list my beliefs and I try to identify where the contradiction is. This is just what I do. This is how I mindfully work through things when I'm stressed or upset.
00:45:30
Speaker
What am I committed to? And which of these two things are smashing up against each other? And which of those do I want to refine or reject? I just think socratically. It just really, really helps me as a therapeutic tool sort through my thinking. And I think it is just a tool for discipline thinking, whether you're stressed in a therapeutic concept text, like I was saying, or whether you're at work or you're reading an article. That constant kind of why is a really good habit to get into.
00:45:59
Speaker
So that was those were my those are the things that I liked about the Socratic method. Yeah, I think what you have here is that at its core, it's a tool for discipline thinking. It's one way of.
00:46:09
Speaker
thinking well is being able to propose clear accounts for things and then explore the implications, potential issues that come up with those accounts and then be improving that process again and again.
00:46:29
Speaker
There's different arts to each step, right? There's the arts of coming up with a good account of something. And then there are the arts of exploring these accounts, coming up with particular examples. And yeah, I think each of us can develop in one of those directions or often in conversation, you might learn that someone's especially good at coming up with counter examples where another person might be good at coming up with
00:46:56
Speaker
theories to be tested and so on. But all of those are aspects of thinking well of being a disciplined thinker. And what you see in Socrates is that he takes all of these things seriously. He doesn't pause or let people just sort of assume that something's correct and then move on. Instead, he's always vigilant about determining whether something is or is not correct, is or is not justified.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah, totally. That kind of vigilance, again, really classic stoic metaphor of being vigilant, being focused on, you know, Epictetus says, you know, you're biting the coin as it's coming in to test it, right? And when somebody says something, you're biting that coin and you say, does that make sense? What are kind of, what's the implications of that? Anything else you wanted to add on the pros list of the Socratic method in your eyes?
00:47:52
Speaker
I would say the main things for me are it's of course a helpful method, both philosophically and in the practical sense as well. Sometimes people will talk about thinking about things from first principles in a Silicon Valley lingo. And that's sort of stepping back and forgetting what the conventional wisdom says about
00:48:16
Speaker
a given domain and instead trying to map out what you're trying to do logically or even physically in some sense if you're doing something scientific.
Summary and Reflections on the Socratic Method
00:48:27
Speaker
And that exercise is often a useful thing to do and it's useful because often what we think is true conventionally may not in fact be optimal.
00:48:41
Speaker
So that's a key good aspect of the Socratic method as well as I think just a general reminder to be vigilant about impressions, vigilant about ideas, and then one way to put your ideas and impressions to the test is through the Socratic.
00:49:02
Speaker
Let's jump into some of the bad, the not so good parts or the things that I think are lacking about it, why I wouldn't recommend you just do the Socratic method all the time. So the first thing I have here is that the Socratic method for all of its benefits is mostly a negative technique.
00:49:20
Speaker
So it doesn't really generate truly creative new ideas. It's not generative in terms of unique explanations. There's nothing really positive coming out of it, I should say. It more just defeats poor ideas and has us questioning our intuitions.
00:49:40
Speaker
So if all you had was the Socratic method, you would end up like a skeptic. You would end up walking around being like, I don't really know anything. Or how can I know anything? Because you just would be constantly questioning, constantly refining. It's not clear to me that the Socratic method would lead you to any sort of answer to the question of how to live a good life.
00:50:00
Speaker
would lead you to any kind of answer to these meaningful questions. It just does a great job of swatting away the bad ones or realizing when you haven't been thinking very hard about these questions. So that's the first thing. It's mostly a negative technique.
00:50:14
Speaker
That's not really, it's not really a bad thing. It's just more, it has this time in its place. The second limitation of the Socratic method is that it requires a willing participant. In other words, it's a quick way to make enemies if other people don't want to play. So it's not persuasive for someone not entering the conversation with goodwill. All you need to do is go on Facebook or Twitter to see lots of arguments engaged, not in goodwill and how unproductive those are.
00:50:42
Speaker
If you have someone else that you can sit down with and pay attention to each other and look at each other and give each other focus and say, let's think deeply about these questions. I'm going to ask you questions and then ask you to respond in a good charitable will and not get defensive. And if you can give that to somebody and they can give that to you, you will make lots of progress. But if you come in and you just start interrogating someone, they will get their back up. They will not admit the contradiction.
00:51:09
Speaker
They will remove themselves from the conversation and it won't be helpful. They will never speak to you again. Speaking from experience, every modern ancient philosopher has had this happen to them once or twice.
00:51:29
Speaker
You know, it's this wonderful tool, but it only works on a small subsection of people and a small subsection of people who are probably in a pretty good spot if they're the kind of people that can do this anyway or are comfortable engaging these kind of conversations anyway. So it limits the scope of when it's valuable. Those are my two. It's a negative technique for pushing against bad thinking or asking you to refine your thoughts. And then it requires a willing participant. Those are the two limitations I find.
00:51:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think those are both good. I'd add to that by I suppose I frame these as risks to the Socratic method. I have three risks. One risk is that you do end up talking about definitions and then you might forget why the discussion began in the first place. And it's always important to remember what you're trying to do with a Socratic method. So that's certainly a risk. Another risk is that
00:52:21
Speaker
Sometimes the cultural wisdom just is correct, and even if it's difficult to explain why. What the Socratic method does is it sort of prioritized what can be verbalized, but just because you can come up with a nice verbal account for something does not mean it's always correct.
00:52:46
Speaker
And then the last risk, I think, is in dialogue. The questioner always has an advantage. It's easier to question than propose. And sometimes someone might come out as winning a dialogue but not being right. And it's always better to remember that it's better to be right than win arguments. And one temptation of the Socratic method is to take the skeptical Socratic
00:53:12
Speaker
position for proposals that may be easy enough to shoot down and then forget that you don't have any better alternative or that the proposal is good enough for what's trying to be done.
00:53:28
Speaker
So in summary, there's a risk that you end up getting to definitional debates. Just because something is verbalized, that doesn't mean it's always correct. And then to be mindful that it's always better to be right and win arguments and the questioner does have some advantage.
00:53:47
Speaker
Yeah, I really like those. I think the framing of risks is right. I haven't seen anybody go wrong from Socratic, the Socratic method, but I think you have to be careful not to use it in the wrong context or understand these risks. I liked your third point, and I guess that's a good takeaway to kind of end the episode on is this idea that if you engage in Socratic, the Socratic method, and you find you can't come up with a good account for something, that doesn't mean you're wrong. That just means you haven't thought about it.
00:54:16
Speaker
It's, it doesn't definitely mean you're wrong. It might just mean you haven't thought about it enough yet. So this idea of kind of, you know, the, the skeptic or the naysayer or the person arguing against you, just because you end up not being able to answer those questions, doesn't mean you have to reject what you're thinking or feeling or your intuition, but it is a good sign that you should think about it some more and you should put some more work into it to get to the kind of point where you could answer those questions.
00:54:45
Speaker
Absolutely. Excellent. Well, great, great episode. Yeah, super fun. Thanks. Thanks for listening, everyone. Thanks for listening to Stuck Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:55:08
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.